


Into the Sea

by anonymousdragon



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, hasty history research, hinted at relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25582768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousdragon/pseuds/anonymousdragon
Summary: A moment in time reflecting Nicky & Joe's reunion with Andy after she and Quynh have faced the witch trials.
Kudos: 33





	Into the Sea

“Ugh,” Nicolò said, wiping blood from his brow as he stared at the departing ships, “Imagine how much faster this would have gone with Andromache and Quynh.” The blood swiped from his scalp blurred with that left from the closing gashes on his arms. His armor had taken a direct hit from the Ottomans' artillery earlier in the battle and his tabard had burnt such that the heraldry was gone.

Yusef sat up, patting absently at the wound evaporating high on his thigh. “Very. Though it is good they have time to themselves.”

Around them, the birds were beginning to circle down, clawing at the dead. The priests would be out soon with the survivors for funerary rites. Nicolò knew they should be moving on. The Grand Master had certainly seen the artillery strike him and there were only so many battlefield miracles that could be explained away. It was a pity. He had always liked Malta. He reached down to Yusef and hauled him up, patting absently at his back.

They both turned away from the sea, looking back at the battered fortress walls. The noise within carried over the battlements and Nicolò took a moment to be glad for the divine that remained.

“We could find them again. They said, what five of the Christian years and meet again in Paris. There is always strife in Paris.”

“By the time we reach Paris it should be time.”

They spent the winter in Tunis, anonymous amongst the pirates there. They marked information in the taverns at night, listening to the chatter of bargains and deals, taking note of the major players.Quynh had thoughts on the Barbary pirates.

About a month before Ramadan, they took the sea routes to Nice and then went by land to Paris. There was an inn—where once the workers had slept at nights to build the cathedral, now some three hundred years gone—where the innkeeper understood discretion and silence was easily purchased with coin.

They took their time to rediscover Paris, to familiarize themselves with the new accent and the stories coming from the docks of the French holdings in the New World. Maybe the four of them would find a crew and set to the sea. There was time to learn a new skill and neither of them had been a sailor in the past two hundred years.

Neither woman had appeared by the Feast of Corpus Christi—which Nicolò still considered a new festivity—but time had little meaning to any of them. It was only as the spats on the streets between the Huguenots and the Catholics became more frequent that rumors began to reach them of bloody deaths meeting witch hunters across the English Sea. Of a woman with an axe.

They were uneasy. The rumors spoke only of one woman, and a rage that could not be contained by mortal thoughts. They made quick work of the passage to England and even shorter as they sought to follow the rumors. It was a coastal town where the brunt of her—likely Andromache since they had heard tell of an axe—rage fell.

The roads they followed were old dirt, rutted and patched with ditches. Nicolò knew he should have had new boots made before they left Malta, but his current ones had held up well enough to reach Paris. It is only now, as they both come closer and closer to Andromache—and Quynh? They’ve both said prayers that they think the other didn’t notice that the women are together—, that the leather begins to give way at the heel.

It was luck that had Yusef turning his head in laughter at some comment Nicolò had made such that he saw the hunter’s cabin off the side of the road. Luck that they noticed the distinctive axe driven into the door. Luck that had them hearing Andromache’s roar as they approached, slowly at first then at a run.

“Where did you go?” Andromache screamed, her voice echoing out of the cabin. Yusef and Nicolò both drew their swords, pausing on either side of the shattered door hanging half off its hinges. “Where did you take her!?”

Nicolò gave a nod and the two men burst into the cabin. As a one room farmhouses go, it was fairly standard. The hearth stood beneath the chimney central to the room, a loft held the sleeping quarters, and in the far right of the room, Andromache held a scruffy English peasant against the wall, one hand clasped around his neck. “If you value your life you will speak,” she snarled, her voice dropping dangerously low. She seemed unaware of the men’s entrance, but Nicolò doubted that was true.

Seeing no other people, Nicolò and Yusef sheathed their swords. Nicolò took a moment to tug the axe free. Yusef set the door back on its hinges as best he could and Nicolò approached Andromache.

The trapped man caught sight of them, “Please, she’s a witch and a madwoman. Help!”

They glanced at each other. “No.” Yusef said.

“Though we would be interested in knowing some of the why.” Nicolò said. Andromache had the situation well in hand, so he took up a guard position. He carefully set the axe within her reach, hoping the familiar weapon could supply some reassurance.

The man shook his head, “I can’t, I don’t know!” he protested as Andromache twisted something just out of Nicolò’s line of sight and the stranger’s face contorted in agony.

“If you wish for a swift death, you will answer the lady’s questions,” Yusef rumbled from his position by the door.

“The sea,” the man moaned. “We threw her into the sea.”

Andromache screamed and the axe swung with enough fervor to slice deep into the wall through the man’s neck. Blood spattered onto her face. She turned to Nicolò and Yusef as she brushed tangled hair out of her face. “We need a boat. We have to find her.”

“Are there others who might have more to tell?” Nicolò ventured to ask. “The ocean is quite large, even if limited just to that around these isles.”

“She is counting on me.” The axe drooped in her hand. “We have to take to the seas.”

The two men looked at each other. Nicolò shook his head just barely and Yusef sighed, coming forward. “Andromache, we will help look. You know this, but we need more information. We need to plan.” He reached out to her and pulled her into a hug.

She let the axe fall to the floor, the handle thudding into the stranger’s corpse. “I can’t leave her.” Her voice was muffled from her face pressed against his chest.

“We aren’t leaving her. We will scour the seas, but Andromache, we need to learn how to sail.” Nicolò wrapped his arms around them both.

She hiccuped a breath at that, a laugh catching on a sob. They would be all right. They could find a balance to hunt down what remained of the witch hunters and see if they could learn where the sailors had thrown Quynh overboard. They had time. She wouldn’t die on them.

Gulls wheeled somewhere over head, calling out to the skies, and deep in the seas, Quynh screamed with all the furor of a bound god, pounding and raging against the iron walls.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to know where Nicky & Joe were when Quynh & Andy were dealing with witch trails and cobbled together some vague events in the 1500s that could account for it. Malta's clearly of importance to the men and the Siege of Malta in 1565 could be the sort of thing they'd be at. This is deliberately on the vague side though.


End file.
